A few messages later and there’s
Ten or twenty of us in a park near Braddon,
armed with banners and badges, a megaphone, desperation and rage.
We’ve tried everything else
years in the making and it only gets worse.
Garema Place doesn’t cut it any more.
The Lonsdale office is occupied for twenty
Maybe thirty minutes before they come in and arrest us.
For the students three hours north, the same is unfolding.
They fit three of us in a paddy wagon,
holding hands and chanting as we’re driven away,
dried blood on the walls.
We’re lucky it’s not summer and we’re not black.
Unloading us in processing cells,
only a mattress and stainless steel toilet
and still, as criminals, we have it better than Behrouz, Walid.
They serve us egg sandwiches and tea as we wait to be charged,
‘Why are you making this so hard for us?’
‘Why didn’t you move on?’
There’s no egg sandwiches and tea on Manus.
‘You ladies shouldn’t have to see such human misery’,
but it’s that misery that drove us here.
One officer—arrogant, orange beard—tells us of ‘weed beds and roses’,
of people in here so stunted by the world around them it won’t let them grow,
won’t let them go.
The time doesn’t go anywhere, neither here nor there,
We’re lucky to have each other.
Five of us, all up, wrapped in blankets
Occupying ourselves with stories and old protest songs.
I wish I had my phone
had Facebook, had Twitter had anything and could see what was happening.
Not knowing is the hardest part of being locked away.
Finally
they take us
One by one
Our weight, our height, eye colour, fingerprints.
I’m second-last to go,
Relieved I won’t be the last one, alone.
We wait for the click, click, click each time
Running to the window as the gate opens, watching each other leave.
The others wait up across the road,
With food and cheap wine and a piece of paper that says
‘Not to be within 20 metres of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection Office, located at 3 Lonsdale Street, Braddon in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT)’.
It’s 7:30, nearly 8, and it’s getting dark in Civic, probably Manus as well.
